According to the 2011 Talent Survey by Aon Hewitt, 61% of more than 1,300 business professionals surveyed anticipate an increased focus on talent development in the coming year. Forty percent believe there will be an increased focus on hiring, and one-third predict increased turnover. These numbers aren’t hard to understand in light of the attitudes of today’s employees. Over 50% indicate they are, at most, passively engaged at work, while 42% are not energized by their work and 40% are generally stressed to the point of feeling burned out. What does this all point to? A potential mass exodus of
employees as the economy improves and hiring increases.

Even more surprising than the statistics above, 83% of survey respondents believe that senior leaders play a very important role in motivating and retaining talent, but just 33% say their leaders are effective at retaining talent they need for the future, and less than a third believe their leaders are effective at hiring more productive employees.

I’ll sum up what all these statistics mean.

Your employees are not happy at work,

They’re leaving as a result,

You’re going to have difficulty replacing them, and
Your senior leadership is partly to blame for
all of this.

Perhaps placing the blame solely on upper management isn’t fair, but you can’t argue with these statistics. Considering how much it costs to replace a departing employee, maybe it’s time to dive in and re-evaluate your employees’ job satisfaction, which is directly linked to employee retention. A recent study suggests two ways for leaders to increase job satisfaction. One, survey your employees’ attitudes more than once a year to take account of changing shifts in attitudes. Two, announce beneficial future changes which will entice your employees to stay on longer.

I’ll go farther with a third suggestion; behaviorally assess your employees
to ensure they are a good cultural fit, not only for your organization but as
well for the managers under whom they will be working.

Implementing all or at least of few of these suggestions
could save your organization time and money!

About The Author

Ryder Cullison

Ryder has more than 10 years of experience working with retained search clients as a search professional. As a pioneer of Interview4 he has great knowledge of video interviewing. He writes about all things hiring and looks forward to engaging with his audience on topics of leadership, recruiting, candidate screening, and employee satisfaction. Follow him on Twitter: @hireintelligent and @cullison1

4 Responses to “Your employees are leaving, and it might be your leader’s fault!”

You gave me some good questions to ask, that I have not thhugot of before. I think the questions you ask for hiring in your own business are slightly different than those you ask when you are hiring in an organization. Thanks!Sue Painter

Very interesting information. Just wondering if you think tools like LinkedIn public profiles and/or Visual CV resumes could eliminate the need for cover letters. Including links to public profiles could be beneficial to job candidates. Maybe you can address that in a separate post.